Nursing (M.S.)

This research discovered the relationship between Suzanne Kobasa’s concept of personality hardiness and cumulative grade point average in diploma nursing students. Hardiness, a stress mediating trait, consists of the personality characteristics commitment, control and challenge. A convenience sample of 36 first year students in a diploma nursing program participated in the study. Each student's level of personality hardiness was determined, along with subscores of commitment, control and challenge, using a 50 item questionnaire. The cumulative grade point average was obtained from each student's academic record at the completion of the first year of study.
The Pearson's r Product Moment Correlation was used to correlate hardiness score and cumulative grade point average. The correlation between hardiness and cumulative grade
point average in this sample was not significant. The results did not support the theory derived from the literature that high levels of hardiness would be positively correlated to high
grade point average.
Further exploration of the concept of hardiness and its relationship to stress mediation and academic performance in nursing students is needed. Implications for further research in this area are offered.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the direction and strength of the relationship between the personality trait of hardiness and the practice of health-promoting behaviors. The literature review covers the background of definitive research dealing with the concepts of hardiness and health promotion. A sample population (n=66) was drawn from teachers of a local school district. The volunteer subjects were asked to complete the Health-Related Hardiness Scale and the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile. Paired scores from these instruments were then analyzed using the Pearson r correlation technique. The result of this correlation (r= 0.481) is significant at the .05 level.

Catheter-associated urinary tract infections account for 35-45 % of all nosocomial infections, making the urinary tract the most frequent site of hospital acquired infections. A non-experimental study was conducted to collect data identifying the risks of developing a catheter associated nosocomial urinary tract infection at a community hospital in Northwest Pennsylvania. The sample size for this study consisted of 48 patients, 25 in the surgery group and 23 in the nonsurgery group.

Asthma is the most common serious chronic illness in children (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1996). Asthma education has been found to increase the ability of children and their parents to effectively manage their asthma and decrease their morbidity (Evans et al., 1997). Asthma medications are not marked in any way to distinguish between inhalers for control and inhalers for acute symptoms, and are labelled with their generic name, brand name, or both. The names are often long and confusing. The control inhaler will not help to open the airways in an asthma attack. Children need to know which inhaler will help them when they have trouble breathing.

The purpose of this study was to determine if the addition of a symbolic label to bronchodilator inhalers facilitated learning about which inhaler to use for asthma attacks in an elementary school-based asthma education program. The method included a pretest-posttest design involving two groups of inner-city children with asthma in Erie, PA. Both the control and the experimental group received asthma education at school using the A+ Asthma Club curriculum, including oral instructions about their asthma medications. This curriculum is designed to be culturally sensitive for inner-city children. The experimental group added a star sticker to the bronchodilator inhaler to remind them to use this inhaler when they have trouble breathing. Children identified their inhaler more often by the star, the color, or the look of the inhaler than by the name, even after individual instruction.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether emergency health care practitioners utilize diagnostic laboratory testing consistent with the guidelines promulgated by the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). In 1994, the Clinical Policy for the Initial Approach to Patients Presenting With a Chief Complaint of Nontraumatic Acute Abdominal Pain was approved by the ACEP board. This policy statement provided suggested guidelines for the diagnostic work-up and treatment for patients presenting with acute abdominal pain. The utilization of established medical protocols for diagnostic testing is closely aligned to the general practice of family nurse practitioners (Murphy, 1997).

This non-experimental, retrospective study involved the review of emergency department medical charts for adult patients with a discharge diagnosis related to cholelithiasis, cholecystitis, and/ or pancreatitis. Permission from the medical center nursing research approval committee was obtained prior to the initiation of data collection. Fifty charts were reviewed comparing the laboratory diagnostic evaluation of this sample with the established ACEP guidelines. This study found that diagnostic testing was consistent with the ACEP guide for gallbladder disease 70% of the time and 77% of the time for pancreatic disease, when excluding the requirement for serum calcium for the pancreatic evaluation. Strict adherence to the pancreatic policy produced an outcome of only 12% compliance with recommended testing.

Chlamydia infection in the United States has the highest incidence of all infectious diseases tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is often without symptoms and there is no rapid, cost-effective test method that provides both high sensitivity and specificity. Consequently, the spread of the disease often occurs by patients who are unaware that they are infected. Gram stain is one test which can be performed relatively quickly and inexpensively. Although not able to directly detect chlamydia, it is capable of detecting the presence of white blood cells (WBCs) indicative of infection. This study sought to examine what relationship may exist between either the presence or absence of WBCs on Gram stain and chlamydia infection. It also sought to identify other clinical factors with relationships to chlamydia infection.

The clinic charts from 54 patients of a public health sexually transmitted diseases clinic in northwestern Pennsylvania, were reviewed. A matched groups design comparing the Gram stain WBC results of patients who tested DNA chlamydia-positive and DNA chlamydia-negative was performed. Other clinical factors were also compared between the two groups.